Welcome Reddit/Shitty Rigs Readers

No particular reason for this photo -- I just kind of like it in a horrifying end-of-the-world sort of way...

The unique and excellent blog Shitty Rigs (which earned a spot on my industry blogroll a long time ago) recently came to the attention of Reddit.com, resulting in a tsunami of new readers.  This is a win/win for all of us that will doubtless result in many more photos of highly inventive bailing-wire-and-bubble-gum solutions to on-set filming problems.

That's a good thing.  This industry tends to attract very creative people at every level, and it's not only fascinating but instructive to see how they find ways to get the job done despite a lack of resources.  Indeed, that's often the most fun and satisfying aspect of this business -- coming up with an effective on-the-spot solution using what you've got to keep the machine moving forward.

Unlike the photo above -- which displays the dark side of mankind's creativity -- this kind of thing gives me hope for the future.  Maybe that protean quality of human inventiveness will find a way around the monumental problems currently staring all of us in the face here on planet earth.

According to my Blogger tracking statistics, a fair number of Reddit readers found their way over here thanks to a link at Shitty Rigs.  All are welcome, but given that a new reader could find this blog a bit confusing -- depending on when they land and what post currently tops the home page --  I'd like to point new eyeballs to this (hit the link, then scroll down) which has a list of direct links to a couple of dozen posts that have been popular with readers over the years.

I really do need to update that list one of these days... but until then, any new visitors should be warned that the very first post is a rather too-wordy tome that served as a champagne bottle broken across the bow of this blog when it launched back in 2007 -- just move on to the other links below and you might find something worth reading.  Those who prefer an uncurated experience are free to wander the dusty digital archives to their heart's content, of course.  The choice is yours.

However you came here, welcome -- and if you'd care to join the conversation, feel free to leave a comment on any of the posts or via e-mail at the link under those worn out gloves above.

And stay tuned...

Lost in Space

The past couple of weeks have been a real grind at work -- especially last week -- so I've got no good stories or pearls of hard-earned wisdom from the set today.  As AJ points out over at The Hills are Burning, it's a bitch to post something worth reading week after week while working on a show full-time.*  Still, this week did offer at least one pertinent observation: not everyone on earth has experienced the five minute Utube clip of astronaut Chris Hadfield's music video homage to David Bowie's "Space Oddity."  Over the past six weeks I've heard so much in the media about this video -- filmed in orbit aboard the International Space Station -- that I assumed only a handful of sentient creatures (including me) hadn't yet seen it.

Turns out I was way wrong. After finally getting around to watching it the other night, I mentioned the video while we were wrapping a swing-set the next morning... and got blank looks from the entire set lighting crew.  Nobody knew what the hell I was talking about.

So much for assumptions.

Chris Hadfield has posted numerous Utube videos from the space station, showing those of us who will never have the opportunity to "slip the surly bonds of earth" what it's like to live and work up there in orbit, that most rarified of high-tech human habitats.  When goaded by his son to cover Bowie's famous song in the form of a video from space, he managed to pull it off, and the results are very cool indeed.

On the off-chance that you haven't yet seen the video, check it out.  Utube wouldn't let me embed the link in this post, so you'll have to click your way there -- just don't forget to plug in some good earphones and crank up the volume.  It's worth it.

This just might be the only music video I truly wish I'd worked on...


* And she's working much longer hours than I am.

It's Hard, All Right

          "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley"

          Robert Burns

For a recent episode, our producers hired a celebrity chef to appear in a guest role -- one of many such chefs who have managed to make buckets of money and become media stars over the last couple of decades by turning their culinary skills to a series of lively, intense, and often confrontational cooking shows.  

Allow me to pause for a brief digression:  I used to watch a number of cooking shows back in the day -- everyone from Pierre Franey to Julia Child to The Frugal Gourmet -- but my favorite was a wonderfully cheeky program hosted by a cheerful British chef named Keith Floyd, who was never happier then while demonstrating the fine art of cooking on camera, be it over a crude stove in the open English countryside or the fancy kitchen of a high-end French culinary school.* Floyd's passionate but refreshingly down-to-earth approach -- usually with a glass of wine (or something stronger) in one hand -- thoroughly demystified the process of cooking.  He introduced one memorable show talking straight into the camera while careening through the French countryside at the wheel of an automobile, drinking all the way.  Adding to his not-your-mother’s-cooking-show credentials was a fondness for the music of The Stranglers, whose tunes often graced the soundtrack of the show.** 

In a bonus we took for granted back then, “Cooking with Floyd” was broadcast on PBS, which meant nobody had to pay a fat monthly cable bill to enjoy the shows.  Ah yes, those were the days...

I’m sure many of the modern cooking shows are indeed entertaining, but my interest in such programming faded over the years.  I’ll occasionally stumble across “America’s Test Kitchens” for a few minutes, but that’s about it.  Although I still like to cook (and continue to buy cookbooks I’ll probably never get a chance to use), I'm not familiar with most of the cooking shows on television these days, which is why I’d never even heard of our guest-star celebrity chef or his television empire.***

Almost everybody else on the crew had, though, and to some of them, having this man on set was a Big Deal.  Given that he'd done so many high-pressure television shows, there was no reason to think he'd be intimidated by sets and cameras, so choosing him to portray a pompous, arrogant chef who runs the best and most expensive restaurant in town must have seemed a stroke of genius to our producers.

But many a late-night inspiration collapses like a bad soufflé during the transition from script to screen, and perhaps this particular notion should have been inspected more carefully before the celebrity chef’s agent was called.  Despite pacing the kitchen set alone for a good three hours, script in hand, diligently learning and rehearsing his lines, the poor guy turned into a proverbial deer in the headlights once the real actors joined him and all four cameras rolled into position.  He continually forgot or fumbled his lines, and on those rare moments when he did manage to summon the correct words, couldn't deliver them with any authority at all -- and this from a man accustomed to being King of the Kitchen, barking orders like the battle-hardened commander of an aircraft carrier.  A quick little scene that should have taken no more than twenty minutes to shoot stretched out to a solid hour... and a tortuously painfully hour at that.

I felt bad for the guy, but no doubt he felt a lot worse.  Still, I have to give the man credit for soldiering through all the way to the the bitter, humiliating end.

It wasn't a complete disaster -- we shot enough takes from various angles for the editors to cobble together a usable scene -- but once again I was reminded exactly why actors get paid a lot of money for what they do;  because most normal people (including some who make a great living performing on camera) just can’t do it. Acting is hard, which is one more reason I’ve always been quite happy to remain behind the cameras -- and why I have a lot of respect for those who do such good work out there in the heat and glare of the lights.

I can only hope our producers learned something from this experience.  My guess is they'll think twice the next time somebody suggests hiring a non-professional for a role in the show.  Just because something looks easy -- and the good actors do that -- doesn't mean it really is.

And I'm betting that there's at least one celebrity chef out there who has a new and hard-earned appreciation for what a real actor can do.

* Here’s a four minute sample of Keith Floyd's unique approach  to hosting a cooking show.  Sadly, he passed away in 2009 at age 65.  RIP, Keith, and thanks for the laughs. 

**  If nothing else, The Stranglers remain memorable for Golden Brown, one of the best heroin songs ever.

*** No, not Gordon Ramsay.  For reasons that should be obvious by now, I can’t name him.

Here We Go Again

                                           Is this progress?

Getting a multi-camera show up and running from a dead-start -- a cinematic barn-raising that begins amid clouds of sawdust, paint fumes, and constant yelling -- doesn’t really end until the first one-week hiatus arrives, usually after the third episode is in the can. By then the lighting on the permanent sets is pretty much dialed-in, and the bulk of our work from that point on involves a bit of tweaking to meet the needs of each new episode, hanging an occasional “special,” and the usual routine of rigging, lighting, and wrapping the swing-sets.*   

That's the good part of a show -- after the really hard work is done -- but getting there is a bitch.  With the construction crew, grip, electric, and set-dressing all trying to work on top of each other at the same time in the same limited space, that initial week on stage is a study in propulsive, chaotic confusion.  

These early, very physical days of pushing the big rock up the steep hill are the most dangerous in the course of any show.  Constantly bumping elbows with the other crews is bad enough, but having to do so amid the scream of chop saws, the mind-numbing drone of sanders, the percussive blat of nail guns, and the reptilian hiss of paint sprayers joined by at least three boom-boxes blaring radically different music at maximum volume --  a cacophonous din that rules out any communication short of shouting -- is a draining ordeal for everyone involved.   

But somehow, in spite of all the noise and confusion, the work gets done.

No doubt the carpenters and painters don’t relish sharing their work space any more than we do -- all of us forced into the same Procrustean Bed -- but since the primal equation of time = money rules in Hollywood, everyone must suffer.  To make sure the work proceeds as safely as possible, each of us has to work carefully and pay real attention to what we’re doing.  It's important to remain fully aware of whats going on all around, and stay within yourself by pausing to think twice before doing anything with the potential of causing damage... which is just about everything we do when lighting sets. 

It’s been nearly a year since I last helped get a show off the ground, and this time was a lot harder than I remembered.  In the midst of it, I recalled a rather pointed -- and suddenly very relevant -- paragraph from a recent review of Robert Redford’s new film, All is Lost.

“Redford's age is integral to the film's effectiveness. He is 77, probably 76 at the time of filming, and though he is by no means your grandfather's 76, he can't be mistaken for a young man. And so all the physical things he must do - drag himself through water, climb, pull things up, lift himself out - are an effort. What a 30-year-old might do spontaneously, he must think about, and position himself properly, and consciously apply his strength with precision and no wasted effort. Thus, we feel his strain, and our involvement becomes much more intense than if we were watching, say, Channing Tatum.”

I’m more than ten years from Redford’s age, but underlined sentence in that passage resonated deep within, accurately describing the mental and physical process I go through prior to each and every action when hanging and powering lamps up on the pipe grid, and never so much as on this rig.  

This caused me to wonder -- did the work actually get harder since the last time around, or am I simply wearing down to the point where it just feels that way?  Truth be told, I'm not sure there’s a good answer to that question.  

Still, there was an X factor on this rig: forty brand new LED BriteShot lamps to replace the 5Ks and many of the 2K tungsten heads we used last season.  The LED units are more compact than the old Studio 5K’s, but as usual in Hollywood, appearances are deceptive.  At around 40 pounds each (about as much as a five gallon bottle of water), these are heavy units to wrangle up in a man-lift.  Getting those pigs hung and powered was only half the battle -- at that point we had to daisy-chain DMX cables connecting the lamps back to opti-splitters linked to the dimmer system, then individually address each head using a keypad mounted on the back of the lamp. 

I shit you not -- a fucking keypad on the back of a motion picture lamp.  The old guys I came up must be spinning in their graves at this.  Me, I get dizzy just thinking about it.

Thanks to our unfamiliarity with this new technology and the short-but-steep learning curve in mastering their set-up, we were still a bit behind the by the time the first block-and-shoot day rolled around.  It was a bit of a scramble to patch everything together and get through that day of filming, but the new LEDs have worked fine since then.  If they continue to perform as advertised, they’ll be a big improvement over the ancient toaster-with-a-lens tungsten technology, starting with their much lower power consumption (3.5 amps vs. 17 amps for a 2 K and 45 amps for a 5 K) and being fully dimmable without affecting the color temperature. That alone represents a huge bonus, given that our DP is legendary for having the juicers add or pull scrims for the same lights all day long during filming.  

He's have us put a single in, take the single out, then five minutes later, put it back in again -- which is how he earned the nickname "The O.C.D.P." a long time ago.**

If nothing else, these LEDs should relegate his scrim-crazy indecisiveness on that fewer lamps, which will make our job as juicers easier -- and if this shifts more of the load to our dimmer operator, well, that’s why he gets the big bucks with his sweet 54 hour weekly guarantee.  Still, the poor bastard earns every penny.

We managed to get through the first episode without any disasters, and then -- miracle of miracles -- one of our lead actors pulled my five dollar bill from the pot in the traditional post-show Dollar Day drawing, netting me a cool $120 after tipping the PA who runs the weekly drawing.  Although I'm still deep in the red after so many years of losing these drawings, I'll accept this as an auspicious beginning to the new season, and maybe a sign that after slogging most of the way through a year that has been so ugly in so many ways, things might finally be turning around.

I hope so.  That would indeed be progress.

* A "special" is a lamp set to illuminate a particular actor in a very specific position on set for a given scene in that week's show -- a light that may or may not be used again over the rest of the season.  "Swing sets" are sets put in for a new episode, then taken out after filming is complete. 

**  A "single" is a circular metal scrim used to reduce the output of a lamp by half a stop.  A double scrim cuts the light by a full stop.

Meltdown

This is a badly-damaged 100 amp to 60 amp Bates splitter, commonly used on sound stages to power one or two 5000 watt lamps from a single hundred-amp Bates extension cable.  As with all electrical distribution equipment, the "male" part of the splitter plugs into the "female" end of the cable -- the hot part, so to speak -- which helps minimize the chances that a juicer doing the hook-up will get shocked.

It seems there's just no getting away from sex in this business, no matter how many tedious, droning, early-morning sexual harassment lectures the production companies force us to endure.  Given that all cable comes with the male and female parts required to make a connection, it's hard-wired into the process.

In this case, the splitter was used to power just one 5 K head, so the unused 60 amp receptacle was taped over to prevent the energized hollow tubes within from making contact with any random bit of metal that might be nearby.  The untaped -- and utterly destroyed 60 amp receptacle -- was plugged into the 5 K.

I'm not a big fan of Bates plugs in general.  They're fine when new, but  -- as in real life -- the male pins and female receptacles lose their tight fit over time and use, and the resulting sloppiness creates internal arcing that can lead to a melt-down such as this.  Juicers can (and should) always check the fit when hooking up Bates equipment, and if the pins are loose, use a pin-splitter to spread them enough to tighten everything up.

This doesn't always happen.  In the rush to get the stage rigged or a set lit -- or often just out of sheer laziness -- many juicers don't bother.  Instead they tape up the connection, then tie the cables together and hope for the best.  This keeps the cables from separating, but does nothing to stop the slow thermal cancer of internal arcing.  It works for a while, but eventually there will be a problem.

We had a big problem here.  After weeks of working fine, this splitter finally melted down on shoot night in the middle of our live audience show.  The lamp went out, forcing us to stop the show long enough to pull the dead lamp down, then install, power, and adjust a good 5 K head, along with a new splitter.  A maximum effort, take-Mt. Suribachi-charge by the electric and grip crew got the job done in just a few minutes, after which the show resumed.  The melted splitter was fused to the dead lamp, and had to be forcibly removed once everything cooled down.  During the process, two of the tubes in that thoroughly burned-out female Bates recepticle were ripped out and are visible in the photo.  Only the third one (below the other two) remained in the Bates housing.  

After getting my new/old show up and running, I feel a lot like that charred Bates splitter these days -- burned out, over-exposed, and ready for some R&R.  That's why there haven't been any new posts the last couple of weeks.  Between what felt like an endless siege of work and watching/listening to the baseball playoffs (hey, we all have our priorities in life), I haven't had the time or energy to post. Truth be told, I wasn't planning on posting today either, but figured you deserved an explanation.  With the World Series winding up over the next few days -- and maybe (hopefully) a bit less stress and strain at work with the new show now rolling -- I'll be back, but not for another week or two.

Or three...

What's a PA to do?

                                   Marvin takes a stand...    

Given sufficient time and money, there are a million things to do here in LA... but what if you don't have much of either?  Let's say you happen to be a production assistant working long hours, five-days a week, on a Disney sit-com -- a low-paying job that offers a toe in the door of Hollywood in exchange for your tender young soul, while leaving you nothing but the weekends and barely enough money to get by.

What then?

Many young people in this situation might hunker down for those precious two days off to recuperate and prepare for the next work-week -- do the laundry, wash the week's accumulation of dirty dishes piled in the sink, hit the grocery store to re-stock the fridge, surf the internet, play a few video games, and indulge in a little low-intensity socializing.  Then suddenly it's Monday Morning all over again, with another long week ahead doing what other people tell you to do. Such is the lot of the average Production Assistant, lowest of the low, occupying the very bottom rung on the shit-stained ladder of Hollywood suck-cess.

Or it would seem.  Then again, I'm not sure there's any such thing as the "average Production Assistant."  Most of the PA's I've met over the years (many hundreds) turned out to be interesting, highly-motivated young people eager to learn and begin climbing that ladder.  Some went on to do just that, and in the process, became very successful. As for the rest, who knows?  Hollywood probably ate some of them alive, while others doubtless had second thoughts and returned to civilian life before it was too late.  I can only hope that most were able to find a niche in the industry they could live with, made the best of it, and are happy with their choices.

All of the PA's on the show I just left are very impressive young people -- smart, articulate, and motivated.  One in particular  (let's call him "Marvin," since that's his name) is a very energetic young man in a hurry.  Straight out of Detroit -- America's favorite dystopian ruinopolis -- Marvin is not taking his LA experience for granted, nor is he the least bit daunted by the sprawling immensity of this place. Rather than retreat into exhausted seclusion at the end of each work week, he's on a year-long quest to experience a new adventure every weekend.  Thus far he's learned -- among other things -- how to make a fire without using modern technology, how to make sushi, how to weld, how to make a wooden bow,  how to be utterly miserable while enduring the sweat-house ordeal of Bikram Yoga, how to ride a surfboard, how to sail a boat, and even managed to fly through the air with the greatest of ease while being schooled in the rudiments of the aerial trapeze.

With boundless energy and imagination, Marvin has done more on weekends this past year -- all on his own thin dime, mind you -- than most people do over the course of a decade in LA.  I've never seen anything like it from a PA or anybody else.

It won't surprise you that his adventures (chronicled on video) are the raw material for a feature-length documentary he's making -- a year in the life, more or less -- or that he posts each week's fish-out-of-water escapade on his own Tumblr blog.

Do yourself a favor and check it out.

This young man came to LA to do things, not just show up for work every day and hope for the best.  He managed to land a PA gig on a TV show (not easy to do) and is well on the way to making his first movie.  Whether he'll "make it" in conventional Hollywood terms remains to be seen -- this town loves big talk about bold new ideas, but when it comes to shelling out the money required to put fresh talent and new ideas on screen, Tinsel Town can be remarkably timid.  Still, the sclerotic nature of Hollywood will not stop Marvin from continuing to make things happen and doing it his way -- and besides, the old modes of doing things are gradually being shoved out the back door by the tectonic forces of the digital revolution.  New ideas and approaches are already beginning to fill that void, which creates opportunity for imaginative young people like Marvin. From what I've seen, whatever he does will be worth watching.  One way or another, I think he'll find a way to "make it" on his own terms.

He's earned a spot on my Industry Blog Roll with a link to "Marvin's Weekly Activity."  Now that I don't get to hear these stories straight from Marvin on set anymore, I'll have check in with the rest of you to see what he comes up with next.

One thing I'm pretty sure of:  it'll be a fun ride.

The Hollywood Circus

Same shovel, different elephant...

It’s one of the oldest jokes in the entertainment industrial complex:  A man takes a job in the circus following the elephants around with a shovel to clean up the mess whenever one of the massive pachyderms takes a dump. When asked how he can tolerate such unpleasant, demeaning work -- and why he doesn't find a better job -- the man's reply is one that resonates with many veterans of the film and television industry.

“What, and quit show business?”

There’s more truth in that joke than the uninitiated will ever know.  Whatever our reasons for coming here, most of us who made the many sacrifices required to carve out a career in the film and television industry have a hard time imagining doing anything else.  Maybe it really does seep into the blood or – after enough time has slipped through our fingers – perhaps remaining here has simply become the path of least resistance.  Probably a bit of both.  I've lost all objectivity by now, and really can't say with any degree of certainty.

So we go from job to job, show to show, doing the same basic work in new surroundings and often with a new group of people.  

One thing I’ve learned over the years is there’s only one good way to leave a show, and that's with everybody else at the season’s end.  After a wrap party to provide a modicum of closure, and maybe the traditional cast/ producer’s gift of a hoodie emblazoned with the show's name as a memento, the crew then wraps the stage clean – and a week or so later, all traces of the sets and lighting equipment are gone, leaving an empty, cavernous sound stage ready for the next production to move in.  Seeing a show all the way through to the bitter end offers a real sense of completion, of closing of the door and moving on.  It's always bittersweet, but such is the nature of the beast.

The worst way to leave a show is to get fired.  Although I’ve yet to be booted off a television show, I've been fired a couple of times during my career, and it wasn't fun. No matter the circumstances, getting shit-canned feels like the most profound sort of failure.  It hurts a lot, and for me, the financial and emotional recovery from both experiences took a long time.

Somewhere in the ugly netherworld between those two extremes is leaving a show in mid-season, before all the episodes have been shot, before the crew has said its collective goodbyes, and with all the laboriously constructed show machinery still going strong. The rest in the schedule will be shot (barring the catastrophe of cancellation), but you won't be a part of it anymore.  Denied the satisfaction of completing the job, you're left with a sense of having betrayed the group dynamic -- the emotional bonds -- at the core of every good crew.  In an industry with so much uncertainty and so many ragged edges, leaving early just feels wrong.

I hate it.

Still, there are no guarantees in a free-lance life built on a foundation of sand that dissolves under the assault of each incoming wave, where you do what you must to survive – and right now, I need to stay on the merry-go-round of work for as long as possible.  Once I step off (or get thrown...), there will be no going back.  Yes, I could day-play here and there for a while, but logging sufficient hours to hang on to the health plan is all but impossible for a day-player nowadays – you really have to be on the core crew of a show to pull that off -- and at my age, it's extremely unlikely that a new Best Boy would take me on as a regular with his/her crew.  Not when there are so many younger, stronger juicers out there eager and ready to take the job.

As I enter the final thousand-day slide towards retirement, there’s no room for error.  Much like a shark, I must keep moving forward or else sink into the dark abyss of permanent unemployment,  and that means taking advantage of every opportunity to go from one show to the next whenever possible.  Spurred by the cable networks, television is now produced on a year-‘round basis rather than the old July-through-March schedule pioneered by broadcast television, and given the shorter seasons favored by many cable outfits, it’s possible to work two or three different shows over the course of a year.  This worked out well for me last year, when just as the Disney show wrapped after cranking out twenty-six episodes, my little back-from-the-dead (and much better paying) sit-com returned with a slate of sixteen episodes, taking me straight from pulling lamps and cable down on one stage to putting lamps and cable up at another studio across town.  This was an exhausting transition that gave me no time to recover -- I hadn't even completed one intensely physical ordeal before being thrown into the chaos of another -- but it kept the paychecks coming in and the hours piling up.  In these rocky economic times, that’s a good thing.

This year, the timing didn’t work out.  With the Disney show halfway through their schedule, my little Lazarus sit-com returned for twenty more episodes, forcing me to choose between the two.  It’s a no-brainer in economic terms – eleven remaining episodes at cable-rate vs. twenty at nearly full scale will mean an extra three thousand dollars in paychecks over the next four months, followed by nine or ten more weeks of better-paying work after the Disney show wraps. Besides, I started the Lazarus show doing the pilot sixty-some episodes ago, and with a network commitment to hit the hundred episode mark (thus achieving the fiscal Valhalla of syndication for the producers), we’re looking at a total of 40 more episodes over the next year or so.  Nobody knows what will happen with the Disney show, now well into its third season.  Most Disney sit-coms hit their sell-by date and melt into the ether after three seasons as the young stars get old enough to rebel from the squeaky-clean straitjacket of Mousewitz and follow the post-Disney trail blazed by Lindsay Lohan, Demi Lovato, and Miley Cyrus in re-inventing themselves as young adults.

Besides, the rate of pay for the crew usually rises after three seasons, and there’s nothing the Disney Corporation hates more than paying people what they’re actually worth.*

Still, leaving a show early rubs me the wrong way no matter how compelling the logic.  I was raised with the idea that when you take on a job, you see it through come hell or high water, but those old-fashioned ideals don't always work in this Brave New World of ours.  I'll do it for all the obvious reasons (the rest of the Disney crew would consider me a fool if I didn't -- and they'd be right),  but I won’t like it.  While I miss out on the rich vein of on-set humor that crew generated on a daily basis – they’re a smart, very funny bunch -- another juicer will fill my shoes, and after a day or two, my absence won't even be noticed.  Individual footprints are erased quickly in the dry desert sands of Hollywood, where the winds of change always blow and the show grinds on no matter what.  

And so I move on to the next job, hanging lamps and running power on another stage, at another studio, with another cast and crew.  They're good people, and it's a fun show.  In a couple of weeks, it'll feel like I've never been anywhere else.  

Same shovel, different elephant.


* Not always, apparently, but from what I hear, even Disney has to pay full union scale at Season Four...